Amazing Art - Picturing Freedom: Harriet Tubman and the Combahee River Raid (Gibbes Museum, Charleston)

 his previously untold story is an important milestone in our country's history that should never be erased. The efforts to remove Harriet Tubman's name from a U.S. Navy ship, and to remove Tubman from the National Park Service website, make this a timely and even more powerful exhibition.

This new museum show brings to life the daring freedom fighters, led by Harriet Tubman on that fateful moonlit night in 1863, when 756 enslaved people liberated themselves in six hours ‒ more than ten times the number of enslaved people Tubman rescued during the Underground Railroad. This was the largest and most successful slave rebellion in the U.S., yet until now it has been mostly overlooked.

The Gibbes Museum of Art, a beacon for the arts in the American South since its establishment in 1858, announces the world premiere of Picturing Freedom: Harriet Tubman and the Combahee River Raid (May 23 ‒ October 5). 

The visionary multimedia exhibition is inspired by the award-winning book by Dr. Edda L. Fields-Black (the Pulitzer organization just announced that her book won the 2025 Pulitzer in History). Her book Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War (Oxford University Press) details a previously untold chapter in our country's history. The Gibbes Museum of Art, a beacon in the American South for arts and culture since 1858 when the Museum’s art collection was founded, is heralded as one of the earliest and most longstanding arts institutions in the United States. The Museum’s collection spans 350 years, and features some of the country’s most celebrated artists ‒ including contemporary, modern and historical works. With world-class rotating exhibitions and a dynamic visiting artist residency program, the Gibbes is a Southern museum with a global perspective. The Museum’s mission is to enhance lives through art by engaging people of every background and experience with art and artists of enduring quality, providing opportunities to learn and discover, to enjoy and be inspired by the creative process. Museum hours and visitor info at: www.gibbesmuseum.org/visit